


To End Harm

by DawningStar



Category: Tron: Uprising
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawningStar/pseuds/DawningStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paige’s nearest competition among the officer class had finished his test in good time, but hadn’t managed to bring a prisoner back alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To End Harm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evayna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evayna/gifts).



The flare of active recycle speared upward from the distance. Paige flung herself behind a half-shattered tank at the first sharp glint of light. Moments later residue from the recycled data hissed as it landed. 

It was fitting, Paige supposed, that the programs she sought had been reported here. Perhaps too fitting. 

She huffed in growing displeasure at the suspicion, shook stray voxels from her helmet’s faceplate, and made a dash toward the next looming wreck solid enough to shield her. About half of a Recognizer groaned audibly at the stress of the ground’s slow inward motion. It didn’t seem ready to collapse quite yet. Paige crouched in its shadow to examine her surroundings again. 

The coordinates had not been specific. She needed to find her targets without alerting them to her presence. 

Paige didn’t have a high-level security program’s automatic access to trace a program’s passage. Some of her fellow candidates had fussed about wanting upgrades, but Paige had seen any number of misguided attempts at modifications to personal code. No matter how well written and useful the code itself might be, jamming a tracking subroutine into a Siren’s disk or a circuit mask into a mechanic in blind hope nothing would hang or conflict was a disaster waiting to happen. It didn’t usually wait long. 

But programs could learn and work beyond the limits of their original design, Paige was certain. General Tesler and the System Administrator must know that as well. Otherwise she, a medic, would never have been given the chance to reach this point, one short step from gaining an officer’s rank. 

She carried a less reliable trail reader among her tools, but tracking protocols did little good on this ground in any case, with all it touched already marked for imminent deletion. Some might call it a clever place to hide. 

Ah. One tumble of ruined scrap stood out as deep enough to let careful programs go unseen from aerial scans, as well as providing safety from the intermittent rain of particles. The terrain didn’t offer as much option as her targets probably believed. 

She’d heard that her nearest competition among the officer class had finished his test in good time, but hadn’t managed to bring a prisoner back alive. If Paige could do better, she ought to get the highest grade and its reward, the rumored second-in-command position opening with General Tesler’s new detachment. At the thought, she permitted herself a controlled smile. 

No need to rush in. Paige took care to identify all the nearest ruins that could shelter her. The timing of the recycle flares tended to be erratic. 

With silent steps, she made her way around the perimeter, listening. There, low voices. Would they be expecting an attack by foot? She hoped not. A good lookout would have been able to spot her even for all her care. But they’d have been more visibly on guard by now. 

Close enough. Paige retrieved a stun grenade from her armor. From this back angle she was fairly certain the crevice between an old-fashioned tank on its side and some sort of armored civilian transport went all the way to the center. Movement inside and a glimmer of circuits confirmed her targets, one of them foolish enough to wear an Iso-sympathizer band openly on his arm. 

If her throw was a little off, the shock would drive them out in any case, and she’d take them down herself. She armed the grenade and aimed it with a careful toss. It bounced twice and burst in a blinding clap of light. Reaching for her disk, Paige moved to follow up the assault. 

Instead of unconscious silence, a high whine on the edge of inaudibility spiraled up into shriller tension. 

Paige stopped short. Abandoning her targets without a second thought, she turned her back in a flat run and leaped to cross the last few steps toward cover, tucking into a roll. 

Behind her bright disintegration flared that owed nothing to the scheduled deletions. A shuddering clap shook the ground, triggering several smaller avalanches of debris, and a tank’s broken gun landed on top of Paige’s half-shattered refuge with a thud. 

The abrupt impact set cracks deeper into the flawed shield that had been nearest, a cascade failure that spread downward fast. Paige scrambled out of the way as more fragments slid down. 

No hiding place was safe for long here. 

The fastest thin voxels of the slide glanced painfully off the armor of her leg before a quick flip got her out of range. She spared a moment to examine the marks. Deep scratches, but not internal damage, Paige saw with relief. Taking time to do a repair would delay her longer than she could afford. Especially after that disruption. 

She looked up warily as silence returned. What had been a shelter was now a scattered pile, empty at the blasted center. 

Targets found and lost again. Her search pattern now had to cover the whole field of debris. Paige frowned, calculating an efficient path that would keep her close enough to shelter at need. 

One section at a time, she sifted the dissolving voxels for any remnant of the programs, her fury leashed but steadily growing. Pavel. This was far from the first time her classmate had sabotaged a fellow candidate’s task. Within training grounds the failures had not been this destructive. 

Three eruptions later a shattered piece of an Iso symbol turned up at last. Paige shook her head at it. The program who’d carried that had probably been unsalvageable, but she would have liked to offer some chance at redemption. Derezz only ever solved one problem.

Code that caused damage to its own program had to be either fixed or cut out. Programs like these rebels, unable to do their job under the Grid’s administration, had to be dealt with. Bringing them back alive would have somewhat mitigated the waste of resources they were and caused. 

Paige had never seen much point in anything they spouted. The Grid’s only foundation for functional order came from Clu. If Flynn had wanted that to be different, as the Iso sympathizers claimed, he ought to have created differently. The system and its programs were as they were. 

The explosion could in theory have been her own misjudgement, her simple flash grenade triggering something dangerous her targets had built or brought on their own. But she knew this was Pavel’s work. 

In the shadow of a fallen chunk of armor, Paige dug out half of a broken identity disk, grim satisfaction curling her lip. 

She hoped Pavel had been careless enough to leave some evidence. Out of all her classmates Paige would take highest pleasure in seeing Pavel demoted right down to Sentry. Like the Isos, like the rebels, he was unfit to be part of the system, a source of more harm than good. His antics didn’t aid the cause of Clu’s order at all. Regardless of his technical skills, it couldn’t be long before he gave their superiors plenty of reason to want him gone. 

Evidence stored, Paige picked her way swiftly out of the rubble. Reporting back before Pavel’s time would still get her the higher score. And just perhaps a seat at his demotion.


End file.
